By Matt Waite
Staff Writer
Given how many scary-bad horror remakes have been produced in the last few years, the prospect of The Thing being resurrected is hardly something that would make fans of the original happy.
This might change a bit if they read that writer Eric Heisserer was actually penning a prequel because he respected the 1982 film so much. However, that hope would most likely revert back into a more extreme form of disappointment when it was discovered he was responsible for penning the terrifyingly bad Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
Given its screenwriter and the usual quality of films that have tried to mimic the success of their 1980’s predecessors, it would seem almost like a given that The Thing would share the same fate. Somehow, though, against all odds, The Thing actually manages to be a good horror film, almost great, though it will probably never reach the classic status of the 1950s film or its 1980s remake
The movie follows American paleontologist Kate Lloyd, a surprisingly well-written character who is capable and competent while wisely avoiding any action heroine clichés. The same cannot be said for scientist Sander Halversen, who recruits her to help his Norwegian team transport the frozen corpse of an alien from a ship that crashed 100,000 years ago. He is written as an incredibly stereotypical leader who says lines like, “Do not ever question me in front of my team. You’re not here to think, you’re here to get that thing out of the ice,” and whose sole purpose seems to be wanting a tissue sample from the alien. His desire for a tissue sample unsurprisingly turns out to be a bad idea and awakens the alien who, if you have not guessed yet, wants to destroy humanity for undisclosed reasons.
The Thing also stumbles with regards to every character outside of Kate Lloyd’s with none of them going through any semblance of character development. This is partly caused by the fact that The Thing has such a large cast of readily expendable characters, which simply does not allow for character development and acting.
The fact that The Thing is any good at all is partly because Matthijs van Heijningen gives a strong debut as a film director and shows a lot of respect for John Carpenter’s The Thing.
It also helps that the editing is done so well that when I went to check the time I was shocked to see I was a hour and a half into the film and not the half hour or so that I had expected. This is easily one of the best-edited horror films I have seen and, may I dare say it, better than the original.
The Thing even managed to scare me at times, especially when it was providing the jump out of your seat type. However, I was disappointed at the lack of scenes which attempt to prolong the fear, especially since Carpenter’s 1982 film did such a great job of it. Even the few scenes the film has were ruined by the highly telegraphed script, which make their outcomes obvious.
Fans of the original will be disappointed that The Thing does have several CGI special effects shots, since John Carpenter’s original set the standard for gross out effects using only practical effects. For the most part, however, they are done very well and I could rarely tell when either was being used.
The Thing has one of its best scenes during the closing credits, which takes events right into the beginning of John Carpenter’s The Thing, which should please fans of the original and helps make up for the film’s horribly contrived ending.
Given that I had set the bar so low for this film (because of the fate shared by so many other horror remakes), the fact that it was any good at all made it stand out and crush my expectations, leaving me pleasantly surprised. Even when judging it as an original work it is still fairly good, though it does lose some of its luster.